thin the
sound of the Gospel.

Inside the churches, what is to be said? Is the proportion large of
those who have received the Gospel in such a way that their hearts
have manifestly been changed by it and their lives brought under its
sway? We should utterly deceive ourselves if we imagined that real
Christianity is coextensive with the profession of Christianity. Many
who bear the Christian name have neither Christian experience nor
Christian character, but in their spirit and pursuits are thoroughly
worldly. Even where religion has taken real hold, is the type very
often beautiful and impressive? Who can think without shame of the
long delay of the Church even to attempt the work of converting the
heathen? And even yet the sacrifices made for this object are
ludicrously small in proportion either to the magnitude of the problem
or the wealth of the Christian community. The annual expenditure of
the United Kingdom on drink is said to be a hundred times as great as
that on foreign missions.

Religion does not permeate life. The Church is one of the great
institutions of the country, and gets its own place. But it is a thing
apart from the common life, which goes on beside it. Business,
politics, literature, amusements, are only faintly coloured by it. Yet
the mission of Christianity is not to occupy a respectable place
apart, but to leaven life through and through.

Vice flourishes side by side with religion. We build the school and
the church, and then we open beside them the public-house. The
Christian community has the power of controlling this traffic; but it
allows it to go on with all its unspeakable horrors. Thus its own work
is systematically undone, and faster than the victims can be saved new
ones are manufactured to occupy their places. Of vices which are still
more degrading I need not speak. Their prevalence is too patent
everywhere. If there is any law of Christianity which is obvious and
inexorable, it is the law of purity. But go where you will in the
Christian countries, and you will learn that by large sections of
their manhood this law is treated as if it did not exist. The truth is
that, in spite of the nations being baptized in the name of Christ,
heathenism has still the control of much of their life; and it would
hardly be too much to say that the mission of Christianity is still
only beginning.

In what direction does hope lie? It seems to me that there can be no
more important factor in th